Infinite Stratos is one of many other anime that starts airing this winter 2011. Story is set in a future Japan where technology has advanced so much that an exoskeleton weaponry called Infinite Stratos (IS) is created and founded. To avoid war between countries and to not let a country dominates other countries by having an exoskeleton. World of nations enact that IS will never be used military purpose and each nation or country will have access to IS technology.

Due to existence of IS,it has a quite an impact in a society because IS can only be operated by women, thus, balance power between men and women is broken. Because of IS, women dominates men in the society. Ten year after the first IS were introduced, once again, the balance between men and women is broken again because a 15-year old Japanese boy named Ichika Orimura is discovered to be capable of operating an IS.

Because of his potential, Ichika was forced to enter Infinite Stratos Academy, an International Academy for training an IS pilot, by Japanese government.

Summary

Ichika starts his first year at Infinite Stratos academy and being a shy boy certainly does no help him getting along with a school dominated by girls or it’s more like he is the only guy there. All his classmates are looking at him during homeroom session and short introduction was laughed by the entire class.Glance over at his childhood friends, Houki, looking for help s=ends up being ignored by her.

Shortly after, Chifuyu, Ichika’s big sister, comes into the class and apologizes for her tardiness. Apparently, Chifuyuis the homeroom teacher for Ichika’s class and all the girls start yelling hysterically and calling her onee-sama. During break time, all attention is focused on Ichika and even girls from different classes come over to take a look at him, the only boy who can operate IS in the world. Luckily, Houki asks Ichika to follow her because she needs to talk to him.

At roof top, they both are just too shy to each other and does not speak to one another for a while. FInally, Ichika breaks the silence and congratulates Houki on her win on National kendo championship and since she didn’t see this coming, she questions him unreasonably on how he knows and why he watched TV ^^;;.

Back in class, Ichika has a hard time keeping up with IS lesson because he has not read the materials before hand and proudly admitted that he accidentally threw away the book which earns him a slap on his head by his sister, Chifuyu. During break time, Ichika was approached by Cecilla Alcott, the representative contender student for England offering her help in the most obnoxious way ever.

All IS students live in a dormitory and Ichika is no exception, however, since all this time, all IS pilots are girls, there is no dormitory for boys so Ichika ends up in a same room as a girl. The lucky girl who gets to be Ichika’s roommates is Houko, his childhood friends. More ‘unfortunate’ incidents can be expected to happen.

Next day, Ichika’s class is deciding on who will be a class representative and two girls recommend Ichika, however, Cecilla cannot accept this and challenge Ichika to a duel using an IS. Ichika tries to be a nice guy by trying to give Cecilla a handicap but he is laughed by the entire class because of IS, women are a lot stronger than men now and Ichika just realizes that now. Because of his price, Ichika refuses to receive any handicaps from Cecilla.

Thoughts

It’s really disheartening that most anime these days are just a re-hash of an old anime with few changes on certain parts. Infinite Stratos reminds me too much Sky Girls and in a way , they both are the same except that Infinite Stratos is a combination of Sky Girls/Strike Witches + <insert anime series with a guy surrounded by multiple girls>, don’t you guys think so too ? I highly doubt that I will go further than episode 2 since the story didn’t pique my interest at all.

Opening song is sung by Minami Kuribayashi who we often heard her voice in Chrno Crusade OP, My Hime and My Otome series OP series thus the OP is pretty good imo. Meanwhile, Ending song is sung by Yoko Hikasa who is known for her voice as Mio Akiyama in a hit series of K-ON! and her sing should be familiar to all of us, K-ON! fans since she sang most of K-ON! OP and ED songs. I have to admit that the ED song is pretty catchy.

Animation wise, I have never heard of 8-bit until now and looking at their short history, they don’t have major anime in their portfolio yet since it was just founded in 2008. Animation is done quite well especially the fighting scenes in the beginning but we’ll have to see if they can keep up with the quality throughout 12 episodes since as a series goes on, quality tends to drop quite a bit >.>.